Page 83 of Ash and Feather

I stumbled back with a gasp.

The instant I caught myself and moved forward once more for a closer look, the spying creature was gone.

“Did you see that?” I asked Moth, who was busy chasing his own tail, trying to put the flaming tip out by smashing it under his paws. The griffin stumbled to a stop at the sound of my voice, settling back on his haunches and cocking his head in confusion.

Clearly, he hadn’t seen or sensed anything.

Dravyn hadn’t seemed overly concerned when I mentioned it the other morning, either. So maybe it was nothing? Just a trick of the light and magic in this place—part of its strangeness that I was still trying to get used to…

I went back to wandering. I eventually ended up in the same place I often did: Within the gallery of glass art Dravyn had created.

It spanned several rooms, the largest of which served as his workshop. It smelled as if the oven in that workshop had been used recently—he must have been working in here after I’d fallen asleep last night.

On what?I wondered.

I lit the torches by the doorway while Moth bounded ahead of me into the first room, his eyes wide and his body trembling with excitement as he took in the beauty gleaming all around us.

“No touching anything,” I warned him. He had a tendency to try and steal the shiny glass figures; I’d already stumbled on several tiny hoards he’d stashed throughout the palace.

His wings and ears drooped at my command, but I didn’t give in.

“You’ll be all right without more shiny objects,” I said, bending and scooping him into my arms. “You have plenty of other things to entertain yourself with.” He had more than enough, really.

Despite Dravyn’s insistence that Moth was a monster he could do without, he absolutely spoiled the creature with toys and trinkets.

I held Moth to my chest as I circled the room, studying each of Dravyn’s creations. Most of the collection was familiar to me by now, yet the light never seemed to hit the figures in exactly the same way; I always felt like there was more to see and discover within the colorful prisms.

As I came to the table that held rows upon rows of red, rectangular sculptures, I froze in place, thinking again of the monument I’d encountered in Ederis.

Two-hundred and thirty-two,he’d told me—one red rectangle for each of the elves he’d killed when he’d leveled that city years ago.

I’d never actually counted them, but I had memorized the pattern they stood in—so I noticed it had changed since my last visit. He’d added more to the right of the collection. Markers for the ones killed in recent weeks, I assumed.

The graveyard was getting very crowded.

My muscles tensed. I squeezed Moth more tightly without realizing I was doing it, causing him to let out a little squeak before giving my arm a vicious poke with his beak.

“Sorry.” I loosened my hold on him, though I hardly registered the pain from his attack; I was too busy thinking of the lush grass, the blue flowers, the towering white stone…

I hadn’t spoken to Dravyn about the stone or all the names that had been etched into it. I’d tried—several times, in fact. The words always fell short.

What else was there to say about the matter?

We both knew what he’d done. There was no undoing it. We had decided to move forward, and that was that.

I pried my gaze away from the grave markers.

My attention moved instead to a pale blue willow tree on a nearby table—another sculpture that had caught my eye the very first time I’d visited this room. I’d since learned that Dravyn had made it in memory of his sister.

Carefully, I put Moth down, and I picked up the tree and studied it. I’d never found the courage to lift this fragile object before, but this time the compulsion was too much to resist.

His sister’s name was carved into the bottom of the trunk, I noticed.

Elora.

As my fingers traced the thin, swirling letters, it was hard to keep my mind from jumping to thoughts of my own sister.

My chest burned as if the scars upon it had ripped open. My hands started to shake. Moth weaved in and out of my legs, occasionally nuzzling his head against them.

---